In electronics there are numerous methods to make conductors. A conductor can be printed on a substrate using an electrically conductive ink and curing the ink at room temperature or in an oven at about, for example, 150° C. which enables a high speed fabrication. The ink is usually made by adding silver powder to a mixture of a binder and a solvent. Other metals such as copper and gold can also be used. When the solvent is vaporized during curing the ink to an actual conductor, the silver particles can be considered to form a physical contact to each other resulting in a good conductivity in the conductor.
Although silver and other metals used have good conductivities, their work function is high. The work function for the used metals is about 4.5 eV with only a small variation. The work function means the energy that is needed to free an electron from a solid material. The high work function, which is in practice constant among used metals, results in a low performance and efficiency. That can be seen as a high operational voltage and in a high energy consumption in an electronic device having operational voltage fed through conductors of these materials. However, since a large number of electronic devices have batteries as their energy sources and the electronic devices have increasing number of energy consuming applications, the efficiency and performance should constantly be improved. Hence, for example, there is a need for making the operational voltage lower in order to decrease the energy consumption and increase the period between recharging.